Shanghai GRAND SLAM | 30 April - 5 May 2013

Press release

Shanghai national federation list now online

German Olympic champion Julius Brink and his new partner Sebastian Fuchs have been given a wild card for the Shanghai Grand Slam

Lausanne, Switzerland, April 12, 2013 – A total of 128 teams from 35 countries have registered for the first Grand Slam tournament of the 2013 beach volleyball season in Shanghai, China from April 30 to May 5, building on similar numbers from the 2012 event.

The Shanghai Grand Slam – which is the first of 10 Grand Slams on the FIVB World Tour, which also includes the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships in Stare Jablonki, Poland - has attracted 67 men’s teams and 61 women’s teams with 25 different countries represented in each gender. In 2012, there were a total of 123 teams - 64 men and 59 women divided across 27 countries for men and 26 countries for women.

The distribution of national federation vacancies in the Main Draw, Qualification and Reserve lists are based on federation ranking points which take into consideration the best six-out- of-the-last-eight results dating back 365 days on a player by player basis for the respective country.

Due to the limited number of reserve teams registered to the Shanghai Grand Slam, the FIVB has decided to offer such teams (after country quota) to take part in the Qualification tournament. For the women’s competition there are seven teams while in the men’s draw there are 17 which will be given the opportunity to participate for the eight vacancies of offer to qualify for the Main Draw.

The men’s competition has seen the likes of Kazakhstan positioned in the Main Draw, Chile in Qualifying and the likes of Thailand and the Ukraine in the Reserve List.

Brazil, USA, the Netherlands, Germany* and China* have three teams in the Main Draw. The wild cards have gone to Olympic champion Julius Brink and his new partner Sebastian Fuchs (GER), and China’s Lizeng Zhang and Zhuoxin LI.

The women’s tournament features Vanuatu, Kazakhstan and Colombia in the Qualification list with Lithuania in Reserve. The likes of Brazil and China* feature thee teams in the Main Draw while USA have dropped one team into Qualifying compared to the Fuzhou Open entry list with Switzerland taking their place. The wild card recipients are Zara Dampney and Lucy Boulton (ENG) and Jieqiong Jin and Chenchen Miao (CHN).

National federations, which are responsible for entering and selecting the teams which will represent them in the tournament, now have until the end of Monday to confirm or re-order the placement of their teams within the listed positions across the Main Draw, Qualification and Reserves lists.